Poopapalooza and the Ouse

First up, I’d like to warn readers (if there are any) that some on the contents of this entry may be a little graphic.  Be warned.
About 12 hours before we would be leaving Tarraleah for World Cup #4 at Brady’s I started feeling a bit rough.  This rapidly transformed into a vicious sickness that resembled projectile vomiting, except from the other end.  I won’t be drinking chocolate milk anytime soon, that’s for sure.  This went on for about 6 hours, then I managed to get some sleep.  But I was completely empty in the morning, aching an in no shape to race at all.  In fact, I spent about 16 hours on the day of World Cup #4 flat on my back asleep in the cottage.  It was frustrating to miss a race I think I could have done ok in but this trip I have been trying to recover from my initial illness, and I think this contributed to my susceptibility to a second infection. 
The worst part of being sick for Brady’s is that it pretty much puts me out of a possibility to race the Ouse, World Cup #5.  The Ouse is a backup site that the race was moved to after a valve malfunction on the Meander Dam.  But the race location meant everything had to be moved up, with the first practice on the Ouse the afternoon of the Brady’s World Cup, a further 2 runs the day after, and then the race.  The Ouse is not a course that the Aussies paddle that much, and descriptions ranged from “just waves” to “technical class III for the final 3km” of a 25 minute run.  I simply don’t have the energy to devote to a hard training paddle now, so I’ll be sitting out World Cup #5 and trying to get healthy for the World Cup Final on Cataract Gorge.  Having seen Tom and Jennie come back from the Ouse I’m actually kind of relieved to be sitting this one out.  Both of them seemed pretty wiped from such a hard day, and Jennie described the Ouse as the hardest thing she had paddled in a wildwater boat.  At a Team Leader’s meeting last night a vote of 8 to 6 passed in favor of racing the Ouse, but with such limited practice (most racers will have 3 runs on a very tough 25 minute course) there could be substantial carnage.  There is no access to take photos but photos of the aftermath, such as a wavehopper with a 6-inch split in the bow, may be common on Monday night.

  After banging up my boat a bit at Brady’s I’m happy to be sitting this one out, especially in a weakened state. 
Hopefully I’ll have better net connections in Deloraine when we move tomorrow and I can finally post the Aussie Parent/Competitor competition, along with some of the cool pics I have from Brady’s.


Update - a storekeeper in Bronte Park told me the Australian slang for what I was suffering from - apparently I had the "Green Apple Splatters".  Sums it all up really.

Brady's

We arrived at Brady’s Whitewater Course, site of World Cup #4, after our “interesting” drive.  I’d seen some video, including helmet cam, on Youtube, so had an idea of what e might be getting ourselves into.  I wasn’t disappointed.  Brady’s was the site of a Slalom World Cup on the 90’s, when the size of the water and the steepness of the course stunned many of the World’s best paddlers.  Slalom has moved on to more and more artificial courses, but this remains a very challenging wildwater course, with big waves, big holes and vicious eddies ready to grab your bow at any time and spin you out.  The course is very short and the winning K1 times will be under 50 seconds, meaning that the top guys will go flat out, with absolutely no margin for error.  But th potential for error on the course is enormous, and I’m thinking that at least 20% of the top paddlers will commit an error on one of the sprint runs that will drop them well down the leader board, and might even mean that they don’t finish.
At the bottom end of the leader board (i.e., where I am) life is much simpler.  Make it down without too many major mistakes (e.g. swimming, spinning out) and you will be fine and you won’t be last.  But avoiding those outcomes is the trick, especially if you are fat and old like me.  The course is super short but drops precipitously and a mistake at the top screws you up for the rest of the run.  There is a flat left hand corner that drops into the first waves (Campsite wave), followed by a small rock island as the gradient picks up.  Coming off of Campsite wave you need to avoid having left angle, or you will be pinned on the island, But you do want to cut the corner around the island tight as if you run wide you are struggling to get back left.  Try too hard to get back left and you hit the bank and run the whole thing backwards – been there, done that, not looking for that kind of excitement again.  A bit further down the gradient picks up even more and there is a deep hole (named after the steepest street in Hobart) which will stop you almost dead, killing any momentum.  If you are on the left above the hole the water will take you around to the left, but its essential to avoid putting in a hard right hand stroke above the hole, or you will into the bank and do the whole thing backwards (yes, I’ve done this too – seems to be a theme here!).

Then there is a shallow hole with a rock that has an upper coating of gelcoat on it from all the boats that hit it.  There is a line to the left of the hole, but it is inches wide and going for it could mean eddying out.  A scuff of the boat is acceptable here, but run too far right and a bit stern hit will kill all your momentum and you could flip pretty easily (I haven’t done that  see, I’m in control here).  I did swim on one of my practice runs (pics will be coming soon – really bad connection here), but generally I did ok as long as I eased off a bit and adapted to where I was coming off of the Campsite Wave.  Tom is looking pretty good and hasn’t had many screw-ups at all.  Jennie has done a bunch of runs but still doesn’t have it down (just like me).  Her speciality is going deep in the hole,

but she hasn’t had any swims and should do fine as others around here screw up trying to go fast.  Its a great course and I’m looking forward to racing consistently and well here.

The "Marlborough Highway" is a Goat Track!

I’m writing all of the current updates to the blog offline, and hope to be able to update with a bunch of entries when we move from Tarraleah.  Even though there are quite a few ways to get on the net here, none of them actually work reliably, so I’m stuck working offline.
The drive down from the Mersey was “interesting”, as both of my technicians have a habit of saying.  First of it seemed like the entire World Cup, excluding the hosts, congregated in the Deloraine Woolworths and it was good to see how much fun the Swiss (Fun/Swiss – how many times do you see those two things in the same sentence?) were having with the shopping carts.
We hurried out of the Woolworths, eager to get on the road before the Swiss because, although they are speed demons with shopping carts, they drive very properly (i.e. like old ladies) so on a long and winding road being in front would be better.  We headed out to immediately drive into road works where the gravel road had just been watered, turning it into a skating rink.  We got back on paved road pretty quickly, but then either the cloud came down, or the fog rolled in, reducing visibility to about 20 yards on a drive that included many 35km/h (that’s about 20mph) corners.  I took it pretty steady and pretty conservative in the bad conditions, but still managed to catch Matt “Foo” French on the road.  Foo is apparently a bit mad when it comes to driving, and once we got out of the cloud and stopped for a bit of a natural break he was quick to explain how well suited our car was for the road, and how poorly adapted his car was.  Whatever dude. 
Shortly after our stop we turned onto the “Marlborough Highway” which, in short, is a goat track.  Populated by 18 wheeler logging trucks doing 100km/h in the opposite direction and unwilling to yield even an inch to oncoming traffic on a single lane dirt road.  As I said – “interesting”.  We managed to survive the trip, and pulled safely into Tarraleah, our home for the next few days.  We examined our “cottage”, which closely resembles the Palace of Paddling Accommodation – simply one of the best places I have ever stayed when paddling (except they lie about the reliability of their internet connection).    Shortly after we had cooked dinner Her Indoors (not her real name) arrived after a harrowing drive from Hobart on the wrong side of the road.  Apparently some of the Aussie Mothers are hoping that I will be a little less outspoken now that my partner has arrived.  Her Indoors knows better – good luck with that folks!

World Cup #3

So this was the last race on the Upper Mersey, and tonight is our last night at Silver Ridge Retreat.  As you can tell from this shot is a truly horrible place to stay and we can't wait to get out of here.

The race today was short, on easy choppy water and was really a "lactic for 7+ minutes" kind of race.  Now I can't go lactic for 7+ minutes o I eased of in a few places, while trying to keep the boat moving.  It worked, and I was pretty happy with my pacing - I could have maybe picked up a few seconds but certainly not many.  My sore muscles now tell me I went pretty lactic.  From the look of pretty much every K1M who finished after me we were all in the hurt locker, big time.  Gulping down breaths of air while maintaining a look of disgust on the face was most common as if to say "That was so easy - so why wasn't I faster and why does it hurt so damn much?".  Luckily (or by strange foresight) I had dropped off a camera at the finish on my warm up run, so I got over 400 pictures of the finish, a place that could not be reached by spectators without a boat.  Here are a couple of examples of the pain on racer's faces at the end.

Gerhard Schmid (4th)

Nejc Znidarcic (2nd)

 

The C boats didn't look anywhere near as tired when they crossed the line - the course was a bit shallow in a few places and they used that excuse to not go as hard (or so it seemed).  It really wasn't a classic C boat course, and to prove it I took 17 seconds out of Tom over the short course when he was less than 6% back on the winner once again.  I was over 3% up on my race result last weekend, and hope that this reflects my full recovery from being sick.  I'm still on course to beat Tom in every race, but there is a 25 minute mini-marathon with big boat breaking potential on the horizon, so I would be foolish to count my chickens.  Maybe I won't race that race?  I almost counted my chickens yesterday when I said the Japanese had arrived and I might have more people to beat as they all beat me convincingly, including Yoda.  So, I can avoid the Dark Side for some time, at least if I stay away from Foo for now.  I was much close to John Gallagher, the Irish paddler in front of me, and I'll be gunning for him at the next race (probably unsuccessfully, but you gotta try you know).

Anyway, tomorrow we drive to bray's whitewater course for some practice.  Its a 1-4 hour drive, depending on who you ask, and is mostly along an unsealed road.  I bet we get stuck behind Brian Wilson like we did on the way home today - someone needs to teach that boy how to drive downhill!

Next post will be the parent/paddler competition, although it might not be today as it takes a long time to upload the pics from this connection.

One day to go on the Mersey

Tomorrow will be World Cup #3, a short Classic on the Lower Upper Mersey Course.  It will be the end of our time at Silver Ridge retreat, where we will have been staying for 8 days.  It is a great site - the cabins are very comfortable and the setting is idyllic.  There is a platypus in the dam next to the site office, and night walks by the owner allow you access to possum and wallaby.  Quite a few of the teams are staying here - the Slovenian and Austrian "Family" is next door, the French are up above and Sydney paddlers Sean, Mad Brian and Liz Wilson are down below.  The Wilson's hosted us for a true Aussie "Barbie" last night, complete with pavlova for dessert.  I was at the end of my antibiotic regime, so I managed to steal one of Brian's beers.  Our drive to the river takes about half an hour over a large mountain pass - it is a classic drive and we stopped to get some pics on the way home to remember how stunning it is here.

We were back on the river today, trying to work out the pacing for such a short classic.  It is a pretty straightforward course with absolutely no bank access, and a 10 minute paddle out at the bottom.  I'm gonna try to stash a camera at the finish to get some shots of folks finishing.  The Japanese finally turned up today - that might give me one of two more folks to beat, but I don't ant to speak to soon.  It does mean that I will be racing a guy called Yoda - makes me feel like a Sith Lord if I beat him.  That will make one of my students who put me on the acknowledgements of his talks as a Sith Lord pretty happy.  Hopefully I'll have some good pics tomorrow - in the meantime I posted a lot of pics to my facebook page.  I'll also work on getting pics for the "Mum/Dad vs Aussie paddler" competition tomorrow.

Tassie Wildlife

The organizers of th World Cup 2009 have laid on a number of "social functions" in addition to the race program.  Today a bunch of competitors, coaches etc visited the Trowunna Wildlife park in Mole Creek.  It was a very cool experience, and we all got to hold a young Wombat, an older Wombat (the difference is pretty big!), to pat a Tasmanian Devil (holding those might get a bit painful) see some native eagles etc and witness kangaroos chasing each other around in what looked like a bizarre foursome mating ritual.  On of the coolest things was watching hulking athletes like Italy Mariano Bifano transform into gentle giants when holding the baby Wombat.  I missed a pic of Mariano, but here is the Brit Jon Schofield.

We also learned lots about the animals, such as the viral cancer that is wiping out Tassie Devils, the fact they can smell for over 5km, and the fact that Wombats can stop on a dime, turning the large bone plate in their butt into a weapon that can stun anything chasing them as it runs into them!  Overall a very cool time.

I also practiced on the Lower Upper Mersey course for the first time today (I know, its confusing isn't it).  The course is pretty straightforward, some waves but not a lot more, and is very short - winning K1M may be less than 7 mins 20 sec.  I did a few runs with Tom, trading off lines, and I think e have it dialed in.  I'm feeling better and better, and will hopefully do a good performance on Wednesday, the next race.  I'll try to get some pics of folks paddling up before then.  Also coming,  competition to match the Aussie paddler to his/her mother, with a World Cup T-shirt as a prize.  Aussie residents need not apply....

Opening Ceremony (Fire and Small Kids - a perfect combination)

I forgot to post about this, and I'll try to add photos later.  But the opening ceremony in Deloraine was pretty cool, with Aboriginal dancing and kids paddling boats representing our countries on the Meander River through town.  But the highlight was the display of fire handling from school kids - swinging pots of fire around their heads, juggling fire sticks, walking on stilts with them, brushing them off of their bodies and my particular favorite, clap push ups over a jump rope that was on fire.  I think the organizers would be in court for some time for this in the States, but it was a very cool display and really impressed a lot of folks.  I didn't get a chance to congratulate the kids doing the display afterwards, but I thought I would put it in print (well, on the web anyways) - nice!

Not Last Again!

Today was World Cup #2 on the Upper Mersey, the first Classic race.  I generally don't like Classics, as they are long and require fitness, and I'm fat and old and don't have any fitness.  But this is a nice course.  It's not exceptional in any way.  But there is a little bit of everything, it is a decent gradient (maybe 50-60 feet/mile) and is pretty continuous, albeit in a slightly benign kind of way.  For those of you who know it, it might be like a North Branch of the Potomac on steroids, with no flat sections and a number of choices of route at every rapid.  I like it. 
The day started with a little mishap - we discovered that we might not have enough gas to get us back to the place where we are staying after we left so had to backtrack 36km out of the way to get gas and then hammer on steep and windy roads to have enough time to do a warm up run.  I was driving, and I took the opportunity to focus on being smooth, hitting each corner with precision while keeping the speed on.  It was essentially a mental warm up, and one that I enjoyed quite a bit.  And we did manage to get there in enough time for everyone to do a warmup run, although Tom left seconds before the course was closed for the forerunners.
My race run was not quite as tidy as the driving that started the day, but I had better lines than yesterday, and my pacing was a bit (but not too far) off because of a lack of splits etc from my enforced time of earlier in the week.  I based my pacing on Sean McIntyre who started a minute in front of me, and I was maybe 20 seconds back from him at literally the last corner when he flipped on a nasty eddyline and swam.  His head popped up just in front of me after his 3+ roll attempts and I stopped to make sure he was ok - the water here is very cold and there were no rescue boats around.  He said he was fine, I asked again (I know the Irish are a little insane) and he again told me to get going.  I lost maybe 3-4 seconds, but it wouldn't have made a difference to my placing, and he seems like a nice bloke.  I think I had a bit left in the tank at the end, but not enough to make up to the next racer, who took about 25 seconds out of me.  Fortunately for me, Sean self-rescued and got back in his boat and finished, so I wasn't last.  I think I owe him so whisky (no Sean, not Whiskey, the real stuff from the proper country) for that.  My time put me around 19% back from the top guys, which was pretty sobering.  But I was happy that even with my stop I managed to beat Tom in his best World Cup result ever (only 5.46% back from the C1 winner).  The racing in all classes was pretty tight, and times were very very fast.  Despite beating his own course record by 3 seconds Dan Hall of the Aussie Fart Squad placed third, with Nejc Znidarcic taking the honors for the second time in two days. The battle between these two will be a good one for th rest of the World Cup.
As for me, I'm gonna try to get smoother and get my pacing down on the lower course on the Upper Mersey.  It looks like it will be a sub 10 minute course, even for me, which suits me very well indeed.  After that we head to the sprint at Brady's, where survival might be the name of the game, although it will be a short sprint, and then to the Ouse which is a 25 minute Classic that might put me to sleep.  So, I'm feeling better everyday, and seem to be recovering well now.  There is a lot to look forward to, including the Wallabies and Platypuses that we may see tonight.

Here is a pic of Tom in the sprint yesterday, complete with Keen Sticker that is really hard to see if you take a photo from any direction other than straight on.

Australian Mothers

One of the most noticeable things about the Australian team at the Tasmania World Cup is the presence of so many of their Mothers.  These ripped guys who paddle hardcore whitewater and are hardcore practical jokers (especially Foo) hang out on the banks of the courses with their mothers.  And the aforementioned Mums are very very cool indeed, incredibly supportive, and have been very very helpful to almost all of the competitors at the World Cup.  If my Mum were still alive I can just imagine her playing  a very similar role, screaming at me to go faster as I fudged my way down the course.  So, here is to cool Mum's who support their paddling sons (and daughters)!

World Cup 1

Well, the first World Cup race, my first International race since the Sesia in 2001, was today. It was a sprint (Thank God) on the Upper Mersey, and I paddled today doing warmup and race runs more than I have all week.  And I haven't collapsed yet, so I'm getting a bit better.  The weather was much colder than in previous days and we did our warm up at 8am, so it was a bit damn cold.  I wasn't really expcting to do that well, and flailed a bit on the practice run as I didn't know my way that well, I just wasn't that used to the boat and mainly because I usually flail on the first run of the day.  By the run down to the start of the first race run (sprints are the cumulative time of two runs) I was a bit out of it, and was entirely unprepared for the "Ok you can go anytime now..." start instruction from the Aussie folks - yep, they are this laid back down here.  I was expecting a "10 seconds.... 5......3..2..1, Go!" but as the start beam was about 15 yards below the "start" we could go as soon as the clock reached 5.  I went, but I never really got going before the finish.  I had no "Go", no acceleration, no strength, and really no preparation for racing.  I had no idea how long the course would be for me as I had done no dedicated sprint runs.  As it was I did a 1.55, which was last but one, and over 20 seconds (Holy Crap!) behind the winner.  The good news, I did beat Tom, who did a 1.56 and wasn't super happy with his run.  That made one of my aims, although I have to do this in every race.

I knew I could do a bit better in the second run, although I was 7 seconds off of the next guy so I almost certainly wasn't gonna move up a place.  I was a lot more prepared for the second run, and went off much harder, concentrating on keeping a higher stroke rate.  It felt a bit better, but it wouldn't have won any awards.  I hit twice, once pretty hard, and was all over the place at the bottom.  Still, I was a second and a half faster to hold my place, to beat a couple more women (never a bad thing for my pride) and to stay ahead of Tom, who did a similar time to his first run.  Was I happy with that - not really, but considering this week of preparation, or non-preparation, I will have to be satisfied.  The result gave me third in the 30-44 year old Masters Category, which came with a medal, but not a bottle of wine (apparently only the Women's Master's medalists got those?).  Still, it is good to get a race out of the way.  I got a good cheer when I went up for the medal as a lot of folks know how crapy I have been feeling this week - folks here are very friendly and the teams have been very nice in general.  It is a good time, and hopefully I can continue to recover and post a result, or at least a race run, that I am happy with before the end of the World Cup.  I'll try to post some pics of Tom's race run when I remember to bring my camera.

She Ain't Heavy, She's my Corvette....... (imagine hoarse out of tune singing)

So, am recovering slowly, still hoarse, and not had much time in a boat.  Got some more antibiotics which made me feel a bit better, and managed to get my boat, PFD and helmet all passed through scrutineering. I got a BIG shock when my boat went on the scale though.  This is a beautiful shiny new Corvette (see pics from a few posts ago) that I paid god knows how much for - seriously, I don't know how much it cost and I'm never gonna calculate it as I'll probably keel over on the spot.  And it weighs........  wait for it.........  12.2 kilos with floats bags in it.  That's pretty light, those of you who do not know the weight limits I am sure are saying (and I know at least some of my students who have no idea about that stuff are reading this).  But the weigh limit for a K1 is 11kg, including float bags.  Having a brand new boat weigh 12kg is INSANE!  Especially when it is a Class VII super special Zastera construction. 

There are actually quite a few paddlers here who are not the happiest with Tomas Zastera just now.  My boat is significantly overweight, as is one of the Irish paddler's Corvettes, and David Gray's C2 is overweight, short, and overwide - the trifecta of an expensive mistake.  Still, what can you expect from a  factory in which Nathan Hamm worked, even if for only a short time?

But what is a kilo really.  Nothing right?  Well, actually it is 2.2 pounds, or 7700 calories less that I need to eat to make up this weight.  And because this extra weight is distributed all over the boat, rather than just in my ample girth, it will change the handling of the boat significantly.  So, I am less than happy with my new boat, just because of the weight.  Not really any chance of cash back though.....

Rapid update

Rapid - get it?? Actually its gonna be quick cos internet is at a premium in the wilds of Tasmania.  I'm still sick, but am recovering slowly and am on my second consecutive set of antibiotics.  I can see the end coming, its just not gonna come before the Masters race on Saturday and Sunday - the only races where I had a reasonable chance of doing ok.  Such is life, its hard to be down about it in such a wonderful place with such welcoming friendly people.  I've paddled the course twice (not overdoing it) and its a good course, not too much flat, not too pushy, not too easy and it makes the French paddlers curse as they don't know where they are going - I'll take that as a recommendation anytime.  Accommodation is idyllic, and complete with local Platypus and echidna.  Company is good with lots of quotes from Jennie (passing a field of lambs) - "Oh they're so cute.... [pause] ...... Yum!" and "Oh, Tom and I sleep together all the time".

Here's a pic of Tom from practice on the sprint course yesterday - clearly he had eaten too much lunch and was about to throw something up.

Anyhoo, that's about all I have time for at this connection.  I'll try to write more later, or maybe prepare an entry and then just upload straight from a word doc to save time - I'll have to play with it...

Matchmaker Tom Wier

Yesterday at Carol's we had to fill out some media forms for the organization.  And by forms, I mean blank pieces of paper that we hand drew some lines on.  We were asked for our names, class we are racing, best international results (I said this really didn't apply to me!) and our jobs.  The latter seemed a bit unrelated, but I ended up putting "Scientist".  When Tom filled in his part of the form he put in his official job title, which is "Relationship Builder".  I didn't realize the YMCA did that kind of thing, but apparently Ton is part of the spearhead of the YMCA's bid to put Match.com and eHarmony out of business.  And who would be better for this than our Team Leader, Tom.

Hobart

After a few days in Melbourne trying to acclimatize and get back on time I flew to Hobart this morning and met up with Tom and Jennie who arrived a couple of hours later.  I started to get sick yesterday after picking up something from a kid on the trans-pacific flight.  My throat is sore, I'm bringing up green stuff (and maybe some blood too) from my lungs and I can barely talk.  But there isn't that much I can do about it and I need to make the most of being in such a beautiful and cool place.  I just hope I don't make any of the other competitors sick.  I picked up some antibiotics from a doctor's office, but I think the bacterial infection is secondary, and I still have a virus infection to get over.

There is a bunch of good stuff though.  Hobart is very cool, based around a harbor and surrounded by tall steep hills, it doesn't look very Australian, more a part of New Zealand that got lost and got stuck underneath Australia.  AND, all of our boats are here, undamaged and shiny.  Tom's paddled did get lef behind in Melbourne, but they should be here in a few hours, if they aren't already.  At the moment TeamUSA is camped out at Carol Hurst's place.  Quite a few of the Aussie team live there, and Carol was a huge help to us when she picked up the boats from quarantine and paid the duties for their import.  Here's Carol.

We've transformed Carol's backyard into a boat workshop where we, and Stefanie Valle of the Canadian team, are assembling our steeds for the following weeks.  Its nice to be around a bunch of wildwater boats and boaters again.

And speaking of wildwater boaters, here is the prototypic boater's car - a real classic, belonging in this case to top Aussie racer Dan Hall.

So, hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow as we shop for resin and glue, do more boat work and head north to the site of the first race, the Mersey.  My SIM card is yet to arrive for my phone so I'm not sure how often I will be able to keep this updated if the phone doesn't come through.  I'll do my best though.

Aussie again

I arrived yesterday in Melbourne after 29 hours of relatively trouble free flying, and that's not a phrase I have had cause to use in recent years.  It was a pretty good trip, with no connection woes, major delays or (most importantly) lost baggage.  I built a few days into my trip in Melbourne for a few reasons.  First, something always screws up with the flight (well, maybe not almost, but mostly) so having time to sort it out is better.  Second, I have some good friends in Melbourne, some of whom might actually buy me free meals (and some actually already have!).  Third, a thirteen hour time difference after a 29 hour trip really screws with you body and mind so I wanted time to recover before I went anywhere near a boat, assuming my boat will be there when I get to Tasmania.  I'll be hanging here for a few days, and Tom and Jennie will be here Saturday (its Friday here now, Thursday at home). 

In the meantime I'll be trying to sort out my "WorldPhone" which two Verizon employees told me I did not need to add anything to for it to work in Australia.  Clearly they were incompetent, as I need a Verizon SIM card, which I can only get in the US.  So, Her Indoors is picking up a SIM card and Fedex'ing it to me in Tasmania, all on Verizon's dime (Thank You Her!).  The phone will likely be the only way I can update the blog rapidly when I am away from the towns in Tasmania, which will be most of the time, so its kinda important. 

Leaving on a jet plane....

I leave for Australia and the Wildwater World Cup 2009 in Tasmania today.  Its a pretty marathon trip, from Harrisburg to DC, DC to LAX, LAX to Sydney and Sydney to Melbourne.  I arrive in Melbourne around 10am on Thursday (today is Tuesday).  I am sure my bags, which include a ski bag containing my paddles, won't make it at the same time as I do.  That is one of the reasons I am hanging out in Melbourne until Sunday.  The others are that I have flown to Australasia enough times to know it takes me 4-5 days until I am actually functioning correctly, and that I know a bunch of folks in Melbourne from my science life.  So a few days to kick back, get on time and possibly catch up on all the blog entries I have started but not yet finished and posted.  By the time I get to Hobart on Sunday, a couple of hours ahead of Tom Wier and Jennie Goldberg (my US Team teammates), our boats "should" have arrived on a ship from Europe.  We don't have a contingency plan if they don't arrive, but its simply not possible to fly to Australia with a boat anymore.  I wonder if my bags will have arrived by that point?

Weight

The name of this blog is the Boater Bloater and, rather like Fat Cyclist (see below), I'm hoping to use my blog as motivation in my battle against the bulge.  So, comments like "wow, you're a fat bastard" are actually welcomed (assuming anyone ever actually reads this).  This is the one entry I want to get down on paper (well, you know what I mean) before I head out to Tasmania, and the Wildwater World Cup. 

I'm not a tall guy, maybe 5'5" or 5'6" if I'm stretching.  But, until my final year on the US Wildwater Team (in 2001) when I was looking for a faculty position, and the resulting time as a faculty member killing myself 80 hours a week, I was in pretty good shape.  I played a lot of rugby as a kid, and those workouts plus a significant weight regimen had me at around 12 stone (that's like 168lb).  When I went to University I dropped a lot of weight from my legs as I stopped playing rugby and ended up at around 150lbs for a long time.  Once I moved to the States the monster portions and massive availability of fast food and pizza, as well as some more time paddling moved me back up into the low 160's.  And that was the weight I raced at my first time on the US team in 2000 in Vipiteno, in Italy, on the Isarco river.  The following year in Europe I had already begun a downward spiral as I traveled around trying to get a job, and I was in the high 160's.  After I got a job at Penn State I tried to keep biking and paddling, but in 2006 I maybe paddled 5 times all year.  I used food as comfort when I got stressed out at work (which happens pretty much all the time) and by the start of February 2009 I was 204lbs - holy crap!

I knew I was getting heavy, like super heavy actually, and I had tried to do something about it.  But nothing I had tried worked.  I won't bore you with what I tried, mostly because some of the things I tried, or thought about trying, are somewhat embarrassing.  Dieting is not something that manly men (like myself - and I've got the hair on my chest, but not my back, to prove it) like to talk about, even less than they actually like to do it.  I'd rather talk about liposuction than about dieting.  But exercise had always worked, at least when I didn't have that much weight to lose.  So, I assumed I would lose weight when I upped the amount of exercise that I did.  I was not alone in this assumption, my Tajik kid coaches also assumed this would be the case.  And we were right, kind of......, for a while.  And then, not so much.  My weight dropped from 204 to 191 in about 3 months, but then rebounded so that 5 months after I began my new training regimen I was back at around 195-196lbs for the National Championships/ Team Trials in Colorado.  One of my major aims to meet while training was losing weight, so I was gutted.  You would think that being a biologist I would appreciate that the body will always adapt to new conditions with time.  But apparently I can't think laterally from work to working out, so I span my wheels for a while trying to work out what was going on.

My other half is a wonderful woman who prefers to remain nameless in this blog, so I will refer to her as "Her Indoors".  She has constantly told me that I eat too much, and just eating less will allow me to lose weight, regardless of how much exercise I do.  But this sounded too simple, and I was unconvinced.  It took an innocent remark by our departmental lab manager, Ray the Hoarder (not his real name), about his recent trip to New York where restaurants are required to post the caloric content of the food they serve.  He discovered that a single slice of deep pan pizza contained 700 calories and, in his words "no one eats just one slice".  Rather than someone telling me what to do this peaked my interest - how much actually is 700 calories?  Is that a lot relative to what I should be eating daily and, if so, how much was 1400 calories for 2 slices?  And how many of those calories did I burn by doing exercise of various kinds?  So I did some reading, some more reading, some math and some planning.  And in 3 months I lost 25 pounds before easing up to prepare for the World Cup.

Its not a coincidence that 25 pounds in 3 months equates to about 2 pounds a week.  Two pounds a week is what I planned to lose, by eating 7000 calories a week less than I burned.  To burn a single pound of fat you need to burn around 3500 calories, but it is pretty much impossible to burn that much by exercise alone, so a reduction in dietary intake is required.  Estimating the number of calories within a meal is not an exact science, but by eating pre-prepared meals regularly and by weighing some other meal contents, I could estimate pretty accurately how much I was eating.  I found some pretty interesting things.  A reasonable size bowl of cornflakes and 2% milk is about 20% of my daily caloric intake but a bowl of oatmeal that is much more filling contains a little more than half of the calories in the cornflakes, and less than 2 pieces of toast and butter.  Paddling hard for 90 minutes burns maybe a thousand calories, riding my bike at an average of 16mph for 2 hours might burn up to 2000 calories.  Unless I did a super long training session that would leave me wasted for days to come I couldn't burn enough in a day to lose a pound of fat.  But by keeping my dietary intake between 1400 and 2000 calories when my basal metabolic rate requires 2500-2600 calories I could lose 2 pounds a week.  It isn't quite that simple, as the weight tends to level off and then drop 3-4 pounds at random times before going back up.  This makes losing weight psychologically challenging, but armed with some information and some math I managed to overcome it.  And, lets face it, Her Indoors was spot on.

My initial aim was being under 180lbs by the time I left for Tasmania, but I exceeded my expectations and ended up around 170lbs.  To have a "healthy" Body Mass Index (BMI) of under 25 I need to weigh under 150lbs, although I have a feeling that BMI is an idiotic measure invented by tall skinny people to make short people with muscles feel bad.  I'd like to aim for being close to a "healthy" range close to the World Masters Championships in 2012 and, armed with some scientific information, I think I can get that done.  In the meantime though, calling me a fat bastard will help with my motivation......

The Upstream World Pukeathon Part 1

Well, its been a long time since I updated the blog.  Work has been super busy, but now I'm back to writing papers so for a break I'm gonna try to update with some entries I have been wanting to do for a while.  The first entry is about a race that I did a month ago.  The race is really one of my favorite, although I have never done well in it and it usually make me want to puke both during and afterwards.  So, on August 22nd I headed out from Hershey to Western PA, Ohiopyle on the Youghiogheny.

Ohiopyle is a cool little town..........sometimes.  It sits on the Lower Yough, which is one of the more heavily rafted rivers on the East Coast, so in summer the word zoo doesn't even begin to describe the river or the town. You need launch permits to run the river and its just hard to get up any speed if you are paddling a wildwater boat.  So, typically I avoid Ohiopyle in the summer.  This weekend is the exception, although this is probably the worst weekend of all.  August 22nd was the annual "Over the Falls Race and Festival", in which hundreds (it feels like thousands, possibly millions) of lemmings in kayaks take the one day a year opportunity to plunge off of Ohiopyle Falls.  And thousands, possibly millions, of gawping tourists stand long the banks watching them, taking pictures and videoing the carnage.  I realize that I am being pretty judgmental here and I shouldn't be, but I've never been a waterfall guy (I prefer to be in contact with the water), or a roller coaster guy or anything like that.  A lot of the folks running the Falls are great paddlers, a lot better than me, but a lot probably should also work on forward paddling and turning before dropping off of a significant vertical.  I think its interesting that hundreds of people will sign up for a race in order to drop off of a waterfall, but that the sign up for a race that is at the same site at the same time, but requires a huge effort and not a small amount of physical fitness and skill even to finish attracts maybe a 10th of those people.  Maybe that's a condemnation of the paddling community in the US, or of society as a whole, or maybe its just me.  I like that the race that I did was the smaller race - I've always tried to do things a bit differently and this is part of that, and part of why I paddle wildwater mostly.

So I've done a good job of not introducing this race at all.  It is the "Upstream World Championships", or the Ohiopyle Upstream Race.  This race has been around for many years, often run informally and raced only by locals.  It is a right of passage for many of the folks working for the local rafting companies.  I first did the race in the early 2000's, when Greg Akins was running it.  Back then I knew most of the folks racing and there were a bunch of wildwater boats.  I never did that well as attaining (that's what Americans call paddling upstream for non-US readers (all none of you)) is not my strong suite (is anything?). I didn't race again until last year, when I showed up after a summer of writing three major grants, not exercising, eating poorly and spending a lot of nights sleeping on a fold out bed in my office.  My "tapering" for the race consisted of going out to Frostburg for the week, paddling every day, so that by the time race day came along I was absolutely exhausted.  I did check out the course beforehand and thought there would be no problem, but the river level was changed for the lemmings to run the Falls. In the race I was awful, and couldn't make the first attainment.  I had to walk back up for a ways, and it was a real low point for me.  I was the only person not to make the whole race course, I was embarrassed and just disgusted that I could be that bad.  I vowed to be better next year, and here I was, at next year.
The "Upstream Race" is kind of a misnomer, as not all of the race is upstream.  The start and finish are at the same point, the gauge at the put-in.  There is a small downstream portion to the bottom of the Entrance Rapid where a downriver boat has a clear advantage over any other kind of boat.  Then we turn around two rocks at the bottom of the rapid and make our way back up, whatever way we can get up.  This year I decided to take the completely opposite approach to last year, heading out on the day of the race and not doing a practice run.  The major difference between this year and last year, though, over 8 months of training.  I was thinking it would make a difference.  In retrospect (where its always easy to see how you should have done it) not doing a practice run was a mistake, in fact it was really freakin' stupid.  I've paddled Entrance on the Lower Yough probably 50 times, but only two of those times have come in the past 6 years, and one of those times was when I had to walk back up last year.  But, I figured it was a mass start race so I could just follow folks and then pass them at the end, or at least try to pass them at the end.  And I was wrong......